Parents

My parents are appallingly NOT GREEN!

Living with my parents for the summer is like watching an environmental horror movie. They are running the quintessential American household, here, a scaled-down version of the country as a whole. They aren't doing anything in particular - it's not like they're dumping mercury into the lake - but they are living ordinary American lives that wreck havoc on the planet in 1000 different ways. Everything from throwing leaf litter away in plastic bags, to putting batteries in the trash, and pouring paint down the drain. And the whole time, they are rationalizing how they live by saying things like "It's just a few bags of trash," or "One gallon of paint is not going to cause a problem," or even "Everybody does it!" It's like 1981, over here. It's utterly appalling. If you made a movie about my parents' lifestyle it would demonstrate exactly why the environment is being devastated.

Part of the problem is the town facilities. This town is so little it doesn't even recycle plastic! (As much as anyone recycles plastic, anyway.) They don't recycle paper, either. There is no dumpster collection and no company that will do recycling. It's just the town dump, and they just separate cans and bottles. There is no 'green energy' option from our power company, and with a $100,000 annual bill I'm not sure we could afford the extra 5% in green-energy fees. If you want to properly recycle a gallon of paint you have to call the facility in a different town, 20 miles away, prove you are a resident of that town (wtf?) pay a fee, wait for the one day every two months they are accepting paint, and drive over there between 9am - 12noon. And then when you get there, they say "Oh we don't accept stain, just paint."

Part of the problem is that we are running a business - a 100 acre campground, including a maintenance crew, construction sites, and a golf course. Things like the Father's Day Pancake Breakfast (serving 100 on paper plates), and building a deck and screen-room with pressure-treated wood, and Tyvek wrap, generate a lot of trash, and a lot of the trash is non-sustainable / toxic / difficult or impossible to recycle.

The biggest part of the problem is that we are in the middle of nowhere AND my parents are working so hard it's taking a psychological toll. So they don't have the time, energy, or organization to do things like save up the haz-mats and take them to the next town over on the one day this summer the place is open. We are so far away from everything and my parents are so tired, stressed out, and stretched to the max, that any time I suggest saving something for proper recycling, or setting up a box for re-using scrap paper, I am met with outright hostility. They need to throw it away NOW. Given that, I guess it's actually a good thing they haven't switched to CFL bulbs.

The house stalled halfway through a remodeling project and my mom is trying to run a business (everything from payroll taxes to bank loans to advertising) out of one corner of the kitchen table. The kitchen isn't really built yet, and we don't have drawers or cabinets so everything is piled on top of everything else and we have about 3 square feet of counter-space for everything from the cutting board and the coffee maker, to the blueprints Dad is working on this week. There is no basement or garage. The "office" is just a table - all the paperwork is spread around the house in boxes on the floor. We don't even have room for a shoebox, over here.

My parents also have a very old-world attitude about Green that prevents them from making efforts when it's not easy. My dad says "We got along just fine for a long time without all this environmentalist crap" and accuses the feds of enacting Green protections just to take away a property owner's right to use his land. Rice farmers who went out of business over wetland protection, etc. He has never explained to me why the feds would go to the trouble of protecting something if it weren't important, but whatever. He won't listen. And my Mom, who likes nature but lacks a Green education, is in a constant state of low-grade panic about the office, my Dad, etc., and simply can't handle one more piece of information. For instance, nobody ever impressed upon her how bad it is to pour toxic chemicals down the drain. So now when she does it I object, and she says: "You don't know what you're talking about," or "That's not true," or "It'll just break down," or "If it were that dangerous they wouldn't be selling it to normal people," or sometimes, just: "Go away!! I'm busy!!"

The end result is a gigantic carbon footprint. We entertain a lot, and this 100 year old house doesn't have a dishwasher, and my mom has carpel tunnel and it hurts to wash dishes, so all the plates and cups are disposable. Also because this house is 100 years old there are 1/2-inch gaps around the doors and windows letting out all the heat. We recently installed some insulation in the walls, but it wasn't much. My Dad won't let us buy office furniture until he finishes building the office, so for ten years we've been carrying everything around in cardboard boxes that need replacing every year. Dad is so disorganized and angry that he needs 10 copies of every single piece of paper he uses. We work 12 - 16 hours a day so about 2x a week we give up and microwave frozen meals in black plastic trays which are poisonous when heated and never ever get recycled - though in this town I guess that doesn't make a difference. We have four computers, four printers, a photocopier and a fax machine that are always turned on and plugged in. Half of them are in a different building and nobody has the time or energy to run over there every morning and evening.

My Dad has planted all these high-maintenance non-native shrubs everywhere that need water every two days. We plant about 100 annuals every year that come in black plastic pots. We have huge tracks of sand or gravel that everybody says have to be plant-free and look pristine all summer. I run around with chemical fertilizer in one hand, and chemical herbicide in the other! (And of course they're all sold in plastic bottles, some of which should probably go to the haz-mat facility afterwards but, we just throw away in the trash.) We throw away and replace 10 plastic oscillating sprinklers every year because they wear out. We have lighting all over the campground that runs all day and all night because the photocells go bad after one winter and we don't have the time or money to replace them, so we just turn them on and leave them on for six months. We have 55 gallons of old paint and stain sitting around the shop fuming in rusty cans. Half of them are ruined and Mom wants to pour them out behind the garage but I bodily prevented her from doing so. I'm not allowed to start a compost pile because it would look sloppy and be bad for business. Nobody has time to build a little shed for it, or to maintain it once I'm gone. And doan even get me started on the golf course.

I stagger around here in a horrified daze. I felt so guilty the first week I was here that I secretly saved a bag of plastic containers, thinking I would mail them to Brian for proper recycling. I abandoned that idea after reflecting on the carbon footprint of shipping, and the likelihood that Yellow Plastic #5 probably wouldn't get recycled anyway, because there's no market for it. I'm doing what I can to stop the madness, but it's so huge, and hostile, and everything's working against me!

Efforts:
I make dinner every night, set the table with ceramics, and wash everything when I'm done. I re-use the Zip-lock bags we use for produce. Since I'm in charge of grocery shopping the only seafood I buy is MSC-certified wild-caught Alaskan salmon. I pulled all the plastic flowerpots off the dump truck and found a nursery that will re-use them for next-year's plants. I used our own woodchips, not commercial mulch that had been artificially dyed and then trucked in, to mulch all the landscaping plants to retain moisture. I bought composted cow manure to use with the plants instead of Miracle-Gro. I am pushing the perennial plants whenever possible, so we don't have to buy as many annuals in plastic pots next year. Instead of low-growing flowers, I am planting fancy lettuces as a border. I did commit the weed-killer sin, but only after weeding the driveway gravel by hand for six hours last year, and seeing everything grow back in two weeks. I'm folding up and re-using the black landscaper's cloth that we use under the mulch. I bought a natural deer repellent. I am collecting all the broken electronic gadgets and mailing them back to CA so Brian and I can get them taken apart and recycled properly, and then I am planting trees to offset the carbon footprint of the shipping. This week I will start painting so I am going to straighten out the paint locker, use up whatever leftovers I can, and take a day off to drive the ruined stuff to the right town on the right day for recycling. Alice has suggested I look into native gardening to reduce the water/fertilizer problem.